Veteran of salmon wars retires despite continuing fight

Three years ago, when many of his contemporaries were planning their retirements, Fred Kircheis made a successful bid for one of the most challenging jobs in state government.

The longtime fisheries biologist for the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife became the executive director of the Atlantic Salmon Commission, the agency charged with managing a fish that was being placed on the federal endangered species list.

Kircheis, 60, is retiring at the end of this month from a job that began when controversy around Maine’s endangered wild salmon was at its height.

“I’m not leaving because of anything that’s happened,” he said in a November interview. “It has been a very, very interesting three years, and very, very challenging.”

Maine’s wild Atlantic salmon and the federal endangered species listing, which became final in November 2000, are no longer grabbing headlines, but they are expected to be back in the news within the next month.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the two agencies that listed the salmon, are due to release a federal recovery plan for the fish, and the National Academy of Sciences is scheduled to publish its findings on whether existing state efforts to protect the salmon are sufficient.

Kircheis said he believes Maine is doing everything it can, and he’ll be interested in seeing what the academy has to say.

Among the strides the state has made are the recent acquisition of the frontage surrounding the Dennys River, easements on the Ducktrap and the Pleasant rivers, and a purchase and easement agreement with International Paper Co. on the waterfront of the Machias River and its tributaries, he said.

All four rivers are covered in the listing and, Kircheis said, controlling land use activities will protect salmon habitat.

Some salmon protection efforts are moving more quickly than others, Kircheis said, but the overall atmosphere has improved from September 1999, when he became interim director of the salmon commission.

At that time, Maine’s salmon aquaculture and wild blueberry industries were fighting the listing out of fear that controls on escaping farmed fish and limits on water withdrawals from Washington County salmon rivers would ruin their businesses.

The state has a water-use management plan, developed with blueberry growers, that will help manage irrigation issues and communication between the state and representatives of Maine’s aquaculture industry has improved to the point that both sides agree to disagree on some issues, he said.

Some things have not changed, Kircheis said.

Gov. Angus King, who maintains that the genetic makeup of wild salmon has been diluted through years of federal and state stocking programs, recently announced he is continuing the state’s lawsuit against the federal government despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences found that the salmon in the eight Maine rivers are genetically distinct.

Kircheis said he began his job as director of the salmon commission with a decision that was difficult but necessary, given the pending listing of the fish as endangered.

In December 1999, the commission enacted a ban on all salmon fishing statewide, a move that alienated many of the anglers who historically have been the strongest supporters of the salmon commission and the agencies preceding it.

“We could not afford any mortality of Atlantic salmon, and my conscience would not allow me to do anything different,” he said.

Another controversy involved a weir on the East Machias River to prevent escaping farmed salmon from entering the river and intermingling with the wild salmon, he said.

Similar weirs had been installed on the Pleasant and the Dennys rivers, but the application process and the proposed location for the East Machias weir proved so controversial to townspeople that King called a halt to the project.

The site of the weir was the only place that allowed the commission to install just one weir, and Kircheis said the commission is working on two alternative sites that could cost up to twice as much.

“This has been a very interesting experience, and, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed the challenges,” he said.

But now, after 31 years with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, working on arctic char, brown trout and alewives, and three years with the salmon commission, Kircheis said he wants to spend time with his grandchildren.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to see through to the end, but there’s never a good time to leave,” he said. “There is always something boiling on a back or front burner.”